“Official” Preseason AGLA Pro Power Rankings!

October 23, 2017Ouglaf

“Official” Preseason AGLA Pro Power Rankings

Writeups by NetsPride15 and Saintz the God

Hi! With everybody posting their list of top 25 players, or their team power rankings, I wanted to make a slightly more official list. So I messaged all of the pro captains/duos and had them fill out a sheet, ranking each team best to worst. I got 11/12 to respond back, and averaged the results to get the final order. Fun fact, not a single individual captain put the exact order we ended up with! Later in the season I’m going to do a full community power rankings, getting everybody’s input, but I just wanted to get the captains this time since they’ve been scrimming. But let’s get down to it. I pulled in NetsPride and Saintz the God to do the writeups for me, since I thought they could provide some insightful and spicy analysis. I had them each take 3 of the teams.

-Crusader

1: Impulse (Avg: 1.2)

Saintz:

Sword play is only fun at night :’)

Nets and Silent are the best duo in the AGLA and their team reflects that. Impulse is absolutely destroying in scrims right now and it appears no one can stop them. But this is just scrims people, I don’t see them running over everyone in the regular season. Nets will get a lot of kills but also rack up a lot of deaths. How to deal with a man like nets you ask? You can’t because he’s always doing something productive. But one thing I can say is if he goes positive on you then you’re doing something wrong. Silent is the no sprint killer and will annihilate you anywhere on the court and make you question your will to live. Best player right now, although I’m a close 2nd >:), Silent has his craft perfected and knows when to swing or hold back. He will always be a top player no matter what because the dude is a wizard at video games, don’t believe me go look at his Minecraft world. Easiest way to deal with Silent is by staying alive, pretty simple right?

NOW THE BIGGEST SURPRISE ALL SEASON WAS NETS PICKING UP LARRY!!! Nah jk, everyone knew Nets was going to get him and I didn’t even think about bidding him up and getting stuck with him. Larry is a guy who needs to pull his hammer out more if he wants his team to win it all. Baiting your teammates so you can get kills with the sword is fun and all but when you’re dancing with the sword on your plate trying to play defense you’ll cost your team a lot. His sword is good, but his game is not. This is coming from a Grifball point of view not a personal POV too. Piggies is probably the perfect 4th for this team as her positioning, like nets, is A1 steak sauce. She gets the right kills and is attempting to get better with the sword so watch out. Piggies is amazing and if I wasn’t such a good friend I would’ve thrown a bid on her. She is a good defender and knows her place on the team very well which is probably her most valuable trait. This means she won’t clash with anyone else on the team in terms of ego and I love that. Meow as their draft pick is also perfect. She is a player hungry to learn and teaming with someone like Silent, she will learn a ton and become even better than she already is. In short, this team does things right but has flaws like everyone else. Beating them will take more planning than normal I would presume. Tanking is the way to go if you ask me ;) (Prediction for end of season = 1st-2nd

2: Notorious (Avg: 3.1)

Nets:

Never fix what ain’t broken :’)

Coming off a strong IGL campaign that resulted in a championship appearance, Saintz & Silva return as partners in crime and look to (finally) crown Notorious this season. The real crime here though was their jaw dropping decision of having AJ fall out of favor for Viper & Determined. Time will tell whether I’m right, but I really believe that will come back to haunt them seeing as how AJ was a very serviceable 4th who was easily playing his best H5 grif. As far as the rest of the team goes, it’ll be interesting to see whether Silva decides to retain his decent runner role or begin to trust somebody else with the ball. I’ll go with the latter since he’s seemingly improved his hammer & sword over the summer but regardless they’ll probably need someone on the roster to step up their running game as well.

Sab taking Digital’s 3rd spot on the roster certainly won’t be a statistical tanking upgrade by any means. But what he will give them is a formidable defensive presence, especially against the runner. In turn, this will open the offense even further for Saintz to produce what should be a monster season and truly show off now. For whatever reason, Dig & Saintz never really got their chemistry going in IGL-it always seemed as if one or the other would go bonkers in the statsheet, but rarely both. Of course that’s all in the past and now Notorious could very well have the best trio, but this is where they should also be concerned. I want to say their opening 4th starter will be Viper. He’s been around grifball a lot longer than most people somehow, myself included, and has some good H5 experience under his belt as well. He had himself a solid showing late in SL17 but went relatively RIP afterwards. Fast forward a few months later and it’s basically back to square one for him. He’s been rather shaky in scrims, which really speaks to the kind of learning curve that exists in H5. If this team is to win the ship, they’ll most likely need Determined to overtake Viper for good and get all of his mechanics down in a hurry. Wouldn’t exactly be a miracle if he does though and we all know what he can bring to the table so for now they’ll take the 2 spot.

3: Suit and Tie (Avg: 3.3)

Saintz:

All dressed up with nowhere to go :’)

Gingy and Digital, a duo that should not be feared as much as they are. Gingy is predictable but still racks up a lot of kills kinda like Galv. If he has an off day though, they don’t have a sab to pick up the slack on the team. However, he has Digital. A passive foop who will surprise you every now and then by boosting directly at you, but it just takes a quarter of a brain to react to this in time so don’t be dumb. In all seriousness though, Digital offers a lot to the table and most of it is where Gingy lacks, so they’re perfect for each other.

Their team however, is not perfect for them. Boss starts it out and I’m just gonna be straight up, he’s bad. I haven’t seen him do one thing that he’s good at all Halo 5 since I’ve been back. Boss is a mediocre tank, mediocre runner, can’t use the sword, and on top of everything else, he’s terrible on defense. The Boss pick was probably the worst pickup all bidding, even worse than Jea to Rain xD, and they will suffer for it. I see them finishing 4th maybe, and that’s strictly because they are playing games 3v4. The 4th on this questionable team is my boy Canon. Tornado valley himself teaming with Boss in back to back seasons. I feel so bad for him. But, he’s with his husband-to-be Digital so I’m sure he’ll have fun. Real talk, Canon does more for this team than anyone probably realizes. The going to spawn meme is true and all, but him just standing mid court not dying means Gingy can sprint off spawn no problem. That’s the scariest thing because when someone can literally just stand mid court and affect the game that much then he needs to be dealt with. Biggest thing this season is how hard can Digital carry. I feel kinda bad for him too considering he just played with me and I carried him all season, but now he’s in the big boy role. Oh and yeah Killerz is their draft I almost forgot, however I hear he’s permanently benched. Which is kinda sad because as much as I hate Killerz, he’s better than boss for this team :0 (Prediction for end of season = 3rd-5th)

4: One Hit Wonders (Avg: 4.0)

Nets:

MLK would be so proud :’)

In a rather odd marriage of players, Tariq and Shad seek to continue their surprisingly strong play together on OHW. They started their IGL season on a team with huge question marks looming all over, and ended their season one win away from the ship-much further than most of us ever gave them credit for. With all that said however, they’ll be without Galvy and Noplex this time around so naturally we’ll just have to doubt them all over again. They’ll literally go as far as Tariq will take them. It’s always been a matter of consistency with Peach Cobbla himself, since he’s definitely shown flashes of greatness at times. There’s a reason why this dude is always going as far as he is. Besides being a beast of a tank whenever he feels like it, he’s a big talker outside of grifball but when it’s game time he is super calm yet all business, even in GGL somehow. This usually enables everybody to play better. Unfortunately, he can be a nightmare for his own team as much as he can be for the other team and it all starts on the defensive end with him. He’ll need to learn how to defend better from his strong supporting cast if OHW wants to be a thing in this revamped AGLA. Not only must he stop being a defensive liability, but he’ll probably need to put up top 3 tanking stats in the process. I just don’t see anybody else capable of doing that on this roster in what’s proven to be a very tank heavy version of grifball.

Shad & Crusader will undoubtedly have their big plays here and there, but the better question is if they can string enough of that to sneak into playoffs. Crusader will have to work on finding this team’s identity, while still working on his own. Shad on the other hand will have to pretend he is on Snapchat by playing more confidently and getting over his mental slump. Cleak, as disgruntled and indifferent as he might try to act nowadays, has always been a competitor and will serve as his team’s usual anchor on D. He will need to monitor his deaths closer now more than ever if he wants to contribute on a potentially light tanking team. Finalizing their roster is BCN, a cool dude but complete wildcard of a player who’ll once again have a chance to play a role on a pro team, but that’ll totally be up for him to decide as always. Nevertheless, these guys have great pieces on an individual level but who knows if they’ll be able to put them together ultimately.

5: Kills Optional (Avg: 4.5)

Saintz:

Wins optional :’)

Rage was desperate to find a duo in the closing days but he struck gold with Invayda Zim. Now, the team name is the worst I’ve ever seen in my life. Luckily this isn’t a team name competition. But unluckily, this is a competition of winning teams. I don’t see this team being in the top 4 to make playoffs solely because of their captain. Rage isn’t a standout player to me and honestly he’s pretty washed. Throughout my return I have noticed that he isn’t great at anything and isn’t capable of doing everything, this hurts him the most and it’s rough to watch. Now, he has Drk which is a great considering Rage lacks in the tanking department, and Drk gets a lot of carrier kills and has pretty solid defense. However the rest of the team doesn’t make up for Rage. Ezy is a great choice and probably the best option he could’ve had because it made Gingy have to get Boss; and we’ve all seen how well Boss does in bid leagues. He, Ezy, is an upgraded Canon because he doesn’t run to spawn every single life, but when he gets to spawn he will not die. Their 4th is King Rick, who is not Rick James911 :(, and I don’t know about this guy man. He has looked like a let down from what I’ve seen him do. With the amount of talent that dropped to Legacy I can’t find a good reason for picking him up.

For this team to be successful Rage has to run plain and simple. I haven’t seen him take running seriously but he could be fine at it considering it’s not hard. Now their draft pick is pooptart so with this knowledge maybe they bench rick and have a set runner, but even then this team isn’t gonna make playoffs. I feel bad for Zim because he really wanted to be on a winning team this season. Overall just a sad team that will make everyone else in the league happy because they are free wins xD (Prediction for end of season = 4th-6th)

6: Vital Signs (Avg: 5.0)

Nets:

Hello VS my old friend :’)

Believe me, I was just as surprised as everybody else the moment I got outbid for Jea and he landed on Vital Signs. He was the best available player remaining at the time so I can see why Rain had his sights on him, but they had a decent amount of credits to put up a good fight for someone more defensively oriented such as Crusader or Cleak. So rightfully, I do question Jea’s fit on the team. Jea will have to give up his beloved spawns and learn how to team tank with Rain which, while very possible, is indeed easier said than done as well. If he can do that, then he’ll be the breakout player of the season.

Arguably the best H5 tank, we know what to expect from Rain at this point. He’ll probably go through some growing pains again with his team early on so cooler heads will have to prevail. Running for them will be Ouglaf who is coming off an absolutely dominant season, one in which game type changes were literally sought shortly thereafter. VS will need him to turn in nothing short of an encore if they want to be the first AGLA team in 3 years to win back-to-back ships. Next up is Noplex, who in terms of raw playstyle resembles my spot on last season’s championship team the closest. A jack of all trades, Noplex will need to be a force on defense while holding his own on offense-things he’s shown he can do as of late despite his understandable availability issues. He’ll have to continue this trend if he wants to beat out Adore, who was quietly an important piece for us last season in playoffs and perhaps hasn’t even tapped into her full potential just yet. Collectively they’ll need big slaying numbers to win as they won’t be outsmarting anyone anytime soon, so plenty of question marks remain. Regardless, any H5 team with Rain & Ougy has potential right off the bat as was the case last season, so everyone else will really need to do their part.